Dow Jones Celebrates Obama’s Second Term Pretty Much the Same Way it Did His First Term

NEW YORK — Wall Street greeted a second Obama term the way it greeted the first.

Investors dumped stocks Wednesday in the sharpest sell-off of the year. With the election only hours behind them, they focused on big problems ahead in Washington and across the Atlantic Ocean.

Frantic selling recalled the days after Obama’s first victory, as the financial crisis raged and stocks spiraled downward.

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It was the worst day for stocks this year, but not the worst after an election. That distinction belongs to 2008, when Barack Obama was elected at the depths of the financial crisis. The Dow fell 486 points the next day.

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

Governor Robert Bentley on Tuesday announced that Alabama will not set up a state insurance exchange under the federal health care law.

“I am not going to set up a state-based exchange that will create a tax burden of up to $50 million on the people of Alabama. As governor, I cannot support adding such a tax burden onto our citizens,” Governor Bentley said. “The Affordable Care Act is neither affordable nor does it actually improve health care. Congress and the President have said they want to work together to solve the fiscal crisis facing this country, and I suggest they start with this health care bill.”

“I have been speaking individually and in group settings with governors from all over the country, and I feel that a significant number of these governors will take a similar stand,” Governor Bentley added.

People like to make excuses for Obama — they love doing that, and they’ve gotten good at it — and one I’m very tired of the “Europe is in recession, so American can’t crawl out of its own” excuse.

If America were leading the world economy, chugging along like a magnificent locomotive, we’d pull Europe out of recession, and everyone else besides.

But instead we have our hopes pinned on Europe to grow the world economy for us, so we can follow in its wake?

How about instead of “Obama can be excused for the poor American economy, because Europe is dragging us down” we say “Obama’s failure to ignite the American economy, indeed, his determination to dampen it, is causing Europe and the world to fall into a global recession”?